


The Starks at War

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, Gen, Military, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, in which I am a total world war 2 nerd and you must suffer, set in the uk, so I probably messed something up geographically
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-10 17:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19909330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: The estate of Winterfell was not once it once was, to be sure, but the Stark family endured. They were quite happy, actually.But with England on the edge of the outbreak of war, that all might change.





	1. 1939, part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the novel the Fitzosbornes at War

Truthfully, it must be said, that Winterfell had seen better days.

The once huge estate no longer provided any income of it's own. The grounds were cut when the council bought off the land to put a road through behind the house. The house was still grand, the gardens still it’s Lady’s pride and joy. The Lord of the house now owned a hand tool factory down the road, and the Lady oversaw a staff of only a cook and two maids (plus the children’s tutors of course, and Old Nan, who nursed the youngest). Even the stable of horses had been replaced by a motorcar. 

The Starks themselves too, had known loss. Eddard Stark, only a second son, had not known he would inherit, until the loss of his brother in the Great War. His fiery sister Lyanna too, lost her life only a few years later, poisoned by the munitions factory where she worked to serve her country. 

But it was clean, and well kept, and the Lord and Lady kept up appearances. 

And the Stark children, it must be said, loved the place. The summer times they all spent on their families lands may well have been paradise to all of them. 

Robb, the eldest of them, got his driving license that summer. Ned Stark spent most of the summer in London, leaving Robb to take the car down to the village where it attracted the attention of men and women alike. He would be going to university come autumn, and was appreciating his final months of freedom. 

A word must be also spared for the children’s cousin Jon. Raised as their brother after his mother’s untimely death, he was often spoken about in hushed tones for the truth of his illegitimate birth. Though the Starks had planned to provide for his education as they had for their own children, his own pride led to him deciding against university, and spending his summer working for the newspaper office in the village. 

Sansa, the eldest daughter, had returned home from boarding school. She had come bursting with stories of her classmates, who came from families older and more important than the Starks, who lived on huge country estates and gave her stories of grand parties and great romances. And if she spent most of her summer in the window seat of the parlour, reading paperbacks and writing letters, she was no less happy for it. 

Arya Stark’s summer holidays were spent much the same as the rest of her year, though without her being scolded for trying to dodge her lessons. Earlier that year, she had received a bicycle for her birthday, and it carried her more days than not into the village. Far less touched by her mother’s concerns of propriety, Arya had many friends there, and carried back with her dime novels and packs of sweets. On her other days, she climbed over the rock wall marking the end of their estate into the land owned by their neighbors, the Reeds, such as it was, and joined the two children there in climbing the trees and swimming in the pond that was all that remained of their land.

In fact, it was Arya and the older Reed girl, Meera, who had a special project that summer: to get Arya’s younger brother Bran out of the house more. 

Before the coming storm, it would have been said that the greatest tragedy to befall Winterfell that generation would have been Brandon Stark’s fall. An active and athletic child, at the age of ten, Bran had taken a bad fall from one of the manor’s windows. The injury had truly in the grand scheme of things, not been terrible. Bran could still bend at the hips and partially straighten his right knee, but both legs were left incredibly weak, and the left one nearly completely numb. 

That had been two years ago, and the boy had resigned himself to spending most of his summer days sitting in his room reading or listening to plays on the wireless. Sometimes he would sit with Old Nan and Rickon, and listen to their stories, but he felt far too old for it now.

Neither Arya or Meera could stand for this. 

So, one warm day in July, the two girls approached him when he was in the parlor, reading a book. 

Both of them have their arms crossed, and Bran isn’t sure what’s going on.

“Come with us, we’re going swimming.”

Bran looks his sister up and down. She might have been wearing cast off work trousers of Jon’s and an old jersey with her hair in rough plaits, but she looks completely serious and at that moment, has a definite air of authority. 

“I’m reading.”

Arya looks at him like he’s grown a second head. 

“You can do that outside. Come one, you’ve been inside nearly the whole year, you look like a fish’s belly.”

And she isn’t wrong, so Bran decides to give in. 

Admittedly, being in the sun again is nice. The window can only let in so much. The day is rather hot, and the water will be nice. The stone path leading out from the house is easy enough for him to push the wheels of his wheelchair on, though when they cut off onto the grass, it takes more effort. 

“What are you reading now?” Meera asks him cheerfully, “Burroughs again?”

The last time Meera had come by, Bran had been finishing the Land that Time Forgot. He had enjoyed it, but ultimately preferred Conan Doyle’s take on a lost prehistoric world. 

He shakes his head. 

“Wells this time.”

“Island of Doctor Moreau?” Arya interjects, “If so, give it back, I didn’t finish.”

“War of the Worlds. It’s that one that was on the radio in America last year and made everyone think it was real.”

Arya wrinkles her nose. “Jon said that was bunk, made up to make newspaper seem better than radio.”

“I suppose Jon might know, working at the paper.” Jon had often told them that the men who ran the news office were a bunch of stodgy, stuffed shirts, who seemed to think they knew more than him simply by virtue of his age.

“Well it’s a good book either way.” Bran insists. 

They’ve reached the end of the Starks land, marked with a low stone wall just above knee high. It’s easy to just step over. Just one more of the easy things rendered impossible to Bran now. 

Arya looks at Meera, 

“You take the top, I’ll get his feet. “

And suddenly, Meera steps up onto the wall and grasps Bran under the arms and hoists him in time with Arya lifting him up by his pasty, atrophied legs. 

“Did you two practice this?” Bran asks grouchily, feeling rather like a slab of meat. 

“You’re not that much different than moving a log.”

That’s not really any better, Bran thinks, when Arya sets him on the ground and moves to drag his chair over and help him back into it. He wishes the back of the device wasn’t so high. If it were lower, he might be able to drag himself over the wall like he does from the window seat. But he was already lucky that it was light weight and metal and not one of the huge wooden monstrosities he had seen when he woke in the hospital after his fall. 

When they reach the edge of the pond, Bran slides himself out of his chair carefully, settling himself under one of the tall trees close to the water’s edge. He pulls off his shoes and socks, letting his lower legs float into the water, even though only righty appreciated it. Arya had been right, it was a good enough place to read a book. 

The pond was large for a pond, feeding into one of the streams that led to the canals through the south. Good fish could still often be fished from it, and it was more than deep enough in the middle for swimming to be a bit dangerous. 

Arya seemingly paid no heed to this, as she stripped off to the swimming costume she had on under her trousers beside the tree. She then climbed one of the branches that hung over the water to its end, and did a cannonball.

Meera goes back to the house and returns with a pole and line. She rolls up her trouser legs before taking a seat on a log near Bran and casting out her line. 

“What’s happening now?” She asks Bran, gesturing at the book in his hand. 

“A bunch of ships with people on them are fleeing the Martian tripods, so one of the Navy’s ships rams it so it the people can get away.’

“Do you think they’ll make it?”

Arya pops her head up out of the water, 

“Doubt it, the Martians have heat rays.”

“Don’t give it away!” Bran says petulantly. This was another of the books he’d filched from Arya’s shelf, that consisted nearly entirely of science fiction and pulp adventures, to her governess’s despair. Arya had once told him they had contained all the adventures she was never going to get to have.

“Just saying, the narrator is just a journalist, and the tripods are enormous.”

That’s what made the story so good, Bran thought. It shouldn’t be very long, yet there’s still half a book left. 

Not too much later, Meera’s brother Jojen sticks his head out the house. 

“Mum asked if you all want sandwiches.”

“Tell her yes,” Meera calls back, and Jojen disappears inside. 

Arya swims up to the edge and crawls out of the water onto the shore. 

“Isn’t he coming out too?”

Meera’s gazing back at the house with a distant look in her eye. 

“He had another seizure this morning, and was out of it for a while. Mum’s taking him to the doctor’s tomorrow to see if his medicine needs adjusting.”

Ah. Though most in the village had come to understand Jojen’s condition, Bran had come to feel kinship with the other boy’s vulnerability. Lady Reed had been a school teacher before she’d wed, and taught him at home before the doctor’s had been able to keep from having the fits anymore. Him and his sister both attended the village school now. 

Jojen does join them when he returns with lunch, sitting between Bran and Meera on the dirt. 

“What are you going to do now that you’re done with school?” Arya asks Meera idly, still chewing on a tough bit of green. 

“Get a job I suppose. Father says one of the sailing clubs down at the marina needs someone to handle registrations and paperwork. Though I’m not eighteen until November.”

“That would just drive me mad. “ Arya responds, “All day, just seeing all the boats go in an out but being stuck in a little box.”

Meera shugs, “I don’t think I’d mind.”

“Not holding out to get swept up by some handsome Duke at a ball somewhere?” Jojen asks with a smirk. 

Bran hides his face. He’s always known Meera was pretty- even if the other boys in the village didn’t appreciate her- but in the past year looking at her has made him feel like he was taking another long fall.

Meera laughs him off, “If the boys weren’t interested in me at school, they won’t be interested at the balls I won’t go to.”

The balls and derbies and garden parties that make up the London social season. They had never been something that interested Bran or Arya in the least. Mother occasionally spoke of the ones she had attended as a girl, and Robb had gone to the Windsor horse show as a guest of a school friend, but Father had expressed more than a bit of disdain at the opulence in the wake of the slump. The world was changing, he said, and they ought keep up.

It was not something the Reeds would have ever been able to take part in. While they maintained what remained of their family’s land, and kept the title, the only thing resembling a fortune they had was Howland Reed’s Navy pension and his earnings from his current role as the harbourmaster. 

“Sansa sure won’t shut up about it though,” Arya comments. 

God above, that was true. 

Sansa had pled to be allowed to go to boarding school for her last few years of secondary education, and Ned and Catelyn had reluctantly agreed. While they indeed missed their eldest daughter, her education was important to them, and Cat in particular had recognized that Sansa, a social butterfly, would blossom surrounded by other girls of her station.

And blossom she had. 

Sansa had left for school with a neat red braid, a pressed uniform, and a head full of dreams. She returned home with her hair pinned up, a purse full of smuggled make up, and dozens of tales of party invitations on the weekends. 

Right now, she was at the table in the dining room with her mother. Having finished her lunch, she was writing to Margaery Tyrell, her house’s head girl, and one of the closest friends she had made during the year. 

“Have you gone into the village to visit Jeyne yet?” Catelyn asked. 

She had not. Jeyne Poole was the daughter of a man Ned had once employed who now ran a shop in town. Jeyne had before this year, been Sansa’s dearest friend. 

“No, Mother. It’s just- I worry we won’t have anything in common anymore having been apart for a whole year.”

This was a half truth. It is what Sansa thought when she pondered her magical year away at school and tried to fit. Giggly Jeyne, who was so frightened of mice and snakes, and dreamed of one day being a film star, just seemed so far away from the sophistication she had come to know. 

“You should go see,” Catelyn says, smiling, but firmly. “Pack a picnic and sit somewhere. I’m glad you’re so happy at school, but you musn’t forget your old friends, or where you came from. Winterfell may not be as grand as where your school friends live, but it is still your home.”

Sansa tried not to wrinkle her nose, but she takes her mother’s advice. The next day, Cook helps her pack a basket and she dons a straw hat and walks to the village and finds Jeyne getting her hair set in the beauty shop, and they share lunch on a bench in the park. 

“At least without you around, there were a lot more boys paying attention to me,” Jeyne tells her, taking a sip from her bottle of cordial. 

Sansa laughs. 

“Oh forget about these village boys. I met so many lovely young men at school.”

Sansa tells her about Margaery’s brother Loras, with his golden curls, who was planning to study at Cambridge. Of Joffrey Baratheon, who had such a lovely face and was of such a good family. Even of Joffrey’s uncle Jamie, who was captain of football at their school, and such a good player, his feats were still spoken of to this day. He had joined the army after graduation, and the girls at the school whispered breathily of his exploits. 

“Oh it sounds so wonderful,” Jeyne sighs, “I wish I could move to London, that’s where all the fancy people live. I would love to go to a ball or a tea party, instead I’m stuck here.”

Sansa purses her lips. The girls she went to school with were girls with estates, and titles. Little Myrcella Baratheon was even the daughter of a Duke. Truly, she did not believe any of them would invite a girl such as Jeyne to any of their occasions, but she can’t tell her that. 

The potential awkwardness of the discussion is brought to an end by the honk of a car horn coming down the street. 

Robb sticks his head out of the window and waves to them. 

Jeyne hastily fixes her hat while waving back. 

“How is your brother doing now? Any of those high-class ladies catch his eye?”

“Robb still has university to finish, I don’t imagine he’ll think of marrying at least until he’s graduated. I think he’s just having fun now, he’s probably driving out to visit Theon.”

Theon had been raised among the Stark’s as a child. Son of another man who Ned had known in the service, he had fostered the boy as both a gesture of goodwill, and a protection from the harsh reality that his life would be up in the industrial north. Now nearly twenty, Theon had moved out of Winterfell and taken a job at the dockyard. 

He had already gone out there today though, in fact he was actually on his way home when he drove past Sansa and Jeyne. 

A bit down the road, he also passed Arya. 

“Want a lift?” He asks, head stuck out the window. 

Arya waves him off. 

“I still want to go by the newsstand, I told Bran I’d bring him the newest Strange Tales.”

Robb pulled on past her, and Arya stepped back on her bike and kept going. 

She’d only gone out today because Jon had forgotten his lunch, but it was a good enough excuse. 

Gendry had worked the newsstand for Mr. Dondarrion since he had left school two years ago. Initially, he had tried to dodge Arya as she pawed through the stacks, interrogating him about the contents of all the pulps. He seemed to have gotten more used to her in recent times though, and often would offer her recommendations. 

After plucking Strange Tales, she turns to him. 

“Anything else good?”

After a moment’s thought, Gendry passes her a copy of Astounding Science Fiction. 

“There’s one in there about an alien. Incredible. “

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

When he rings her up, and takes her pocket money, he asks. 

“So how’s it all go for the Starks up upon the hill?”

Arya makes a face. 

“There’s no hill, the land here is flat.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

He had always been like this, ever since he found out her father was Lord Stark. It used to make him wary of her, now he seemed just to take the opportunity to tease her. 

She shrugs. 

“Most of the same. Sansa chattering on about school, me trying to drag Bran out more. Robb keeps driving places and still won’t teach me.”

“I’m with you, I’d love to learn to drive. Thought about going down to the next town, see if I can find a job working on them.”

Arya’s stomach twists at the thought of him not being in the village anymore. 

“You won’t do it will you?”

Gendry makes a soft noise, and tugs his cap a little lower on his head. He puts his elbows on the counter and rests his chin on his hands. 

“I don’t know. It would be a great opportunity. A chance to leave,” he gestures at the quiet street in front of him, “all of this.”

Arya’s in a bad mood the entire ride home. She tries not to agree with Gendry. The village was tiny. The shops, a newsstand, the post office, the newspaper, the church. That was mostly it. She’d often had the same sort of thoughts herself. 

Much of the summer passes in the same fashion. 

Bran turns thirteen in August. When asked what he wants for his birthday, he says, 

“I just want Father home, he’s always gone for it. “

“Alas your father still has social obligations in London.”

Catelyn too, wished he could return, but some courtesies must be observed, no matter how much she missed her husband. 

Bran sighs, he really should have known better by now. 

“A new sketchbook would be good too.”

He gets the book, and spends much of the remains of the month by the pond with Meera and Jojen. He draws planes that he’s seen in magazines, and newspapers, or the few that fly overhead. 

“I wish I could be a pilot.” He tells Jojen one day. 

“I used to want to be one too.” Jojen admits. 

“I guess neither of us are ever going to fly.”

It wasn’t fair, he thought, that the both of them were stuck grounded. 

One day, Sansa peeks her head into Arya’s room. 

“Can you come to Jeyne’s with me today?”

“Why?” Arya asks, confused. Sansa’s sudden appearance in her room was unusual enough. The two girls were not close, and Arya had often been pleased that they didn’t have to share a room like some of the girls she knew in the village. 

“I’m going to cut my hair.”

That was a bit surprising. Sansa had always been so proud of her long, smooth, Tully red hair, so much like Mother’s. 

“Why do you need me for that?”

“I’m worried I might chicken out.”

Well that at least made sense. 

Jeyne’s aunt Ellyn did hair out of the family’s parlour. When Sansa was sitting in the chair, with Ellyn washing, combing, then snipping at her long hair, Arya would have swore her sister was in pain. But, Sansa insisted that long hair was terribly old fashioned, and she’d even seen pictures of Cersei Lannister, Lady of Casterly Rock, before she married and became a Duchess, with her hair bobbed.  
When Ellyn’s done, Sansa shakes her head in amazement, 

“My head feels so light!” 

Looking at her sister, Arya has a queer notion. 

“Can you do mine too?”

Both are a touch worried when they come back home that night. Sansa rides on the handlebars of Arya’s bike, like she had done with Robb when they were young children, and Arya felt for once like they might really be sisters. 

When Catelyn sees them, she reaches out to touch the shorn ends of Sansa’s hair. 

“I can show you how to set it properly later.”

Then she moves on to Arya’s. 

“Did they use the hedge clippers on yours?”

But the cut proves very practical the next week, when Catelyn enlists her to help her dig up and move several of the rose bushes in the garden. It stayed out of her face, and reduced the sweat on her neck. 

Ned returns to Winterfell near the end of the month. The only one not home when he comes is Jon, who’s working late. 

When Jon returns home, only Ned is still in the parlour. 

Happy to see his uncle, Jon moves to embrace him. 

“Any particular reason your superiors kept you from my homecoming?”

Jon laughs, but he looks a bit uneasy. 

“We had to run an extra edition. Thorne got word in last minute, Hitler has invaded Poland.”

Ned sighs deeply. 

He stays up later than the others, alone in his study. 

It would be a lie if he said he hadn’t felt the waves coming in in the past few years. Ned had served in the Navy during the Great War, and though he had had more than enough of war, he knew what he heard. 

Jon stayed up that night too, switching through channels on the wireless, nearly all dead. He was in a unique position compared to the rest of the family, and wasn’t sure what he should say, if anything. 

The next day is chaos, with Sansa packing to return to school, Bran and Arya having to be coerced into restarting their lessons, and Robb preparing to leave for university. Ned and Jon barely had time to think about anything.

September 3 was set to be their last breakfast all together. Sansa was nibbling at her eggs, which she swore the school cooks could not make as good. Arya was shoveling down her porridge so she would have enough energy to make a break for it after. Bran appeared to be attempting to demonstrate something to Robb using bit of his bacon as his models. Rickon had somehow already gotten jam smeared on him. 

And Cat was watching Ned, with a smile on her face. 

Jon didn’t usually turn on the wireless during breakfast, but he’d had an impulse that day. One that turned out to be prudent. 

A hand reaches out and turns the volume nod, and the voice of the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is head:

“I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

The speech continues, but one by one, every face at the table freezes.

Ned feels something deep in his gut begin to ache. He hopes he can remember this breakfast as it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story Gendry tells Arya to read is "Who Goes There?" by John W Campbell Jr. It's the story that eventually became The Thing from Another World.


	2. 1939, part 2

Catelyn had been a girl still, at the outbreak of the Great War. In her youthful naivete, she had believed the propaganda; that the war would be brief and the boys she knew would come home in glory. 

Her vision had been shattered. 

Her engagement to Brandon Stark had been a terribly childish decision in retrospect, the last act of tradition, the union of two great families before the walls came down. 

When he had died, she had felt that her world would end. Ned had held her when he could, and when the war ended they had fallen in love amidst their shared grief. Lyanna’s death had dealt another blow to Ned, unexpectedly. Lyanna had somehow managed to thrive during the war instead of being crushed by it, and in the end, her work managed to crush her anyway.

Yet here Catelyn is, hanging blackout curtains and watching as her children leave Winterfell one by one. 

Sansa had been the first, seemingly both terrified and impatient to leave. Ned and Cat had half considered pulling her out of school, but everything was already prepared, her fees paid, and her school was in Kent, far from London. 

Robb was eighteen in June. He joins up immediately, taking a spot in the RAF before he could be conscripted. 

When Ned raises an eyebrow at his choice of service, Robb grins softly and says, 

“I get seasick.”

Jon joins him soon after. Theon has joined the regular British army, haunted by his father’s words about choice of military service.

Catelyn had looked at Ned when all three of them left, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. 

“They wouldn’t...not again?”

“No,” Ned insists firmly, “Everyone remembers exactly what happened then”. 

When the Great War had started, all the men who could had enlisted. The army had often posted men who were from the same villages and towns together, in hopes that their already created camaraderie would make the transition easier. 

It had resulted in some villages losing every single one of their young men. The idea of losing even one of her sons, even Theon, who had already left, even Jon, who she was sometimes embarrassed of, made Cat want to weep. She was so grateful for Bran’s condition, and Rickon’s age, even if thinking so made her feel a traitor. 

Ned had left almost immediately afterwards to return to London. He says the government will likely want him to turn production towards the war effort, and he wants to get on top of it, especially once most of his work force disappears. He doesn’t tell anyone that watching Robb and Jon and Theon all walk down the road together broke his heart. 

Bran and Arya stare after them with jealousy. They’re both supposed to be doing their schoolwork, but it’s hard to focus on maths and history when history feels like it’s happening around them. 

Arya has her own responsibilities though. At the end of the month, petrol is rationed. She rides her bike to the shops every few days, to buy and carry home whatever they need. They have to cook and keep up the house mostly themselves now. The cook and the older maid have both left to return north to their families, and Beth looks like she wants to leave every day. Old Nan moves back in with her sister down the road by the church, though she still comes by to help out with Rickon 

At the end of September, Arya gets another unwanted surprise. 

“You’re joining up too?” She demands. 

“I’m eighteen next month,” Gendry tells her, “And if I don’t join now, I’ll get drafted and might not get a choice where I end up. The Navy says they need mechanics. All the planes and tanks and everything now.”

Arya bites her lip. 

“I know, it’s just. It feels like everyone’s leaving. Father’s in London again now, and Robb and Jon and now you too. It feels like everyone’s leaving and I’ll be stuck at home cleaning and knitting socks and listening to the wireless and trying not to pace and panic.”

Gendry sighs a bit. 

“You’re fourteen now right?”

Arya nods. 

“Keep your eyes open. With all the men enlisting, they’ll need women to do everything we would be, they did during the last war. They’ll be opening up the services to women more soon I’d bet too. But let’s hope it doesn’t go on long enough for you to be able to enlist.”

Suddenly, he starts to look a bit shy.

“Could you…”

Arya furrows her eyebrows. Shy isn’t a look she’s ever seen on Gendry, and she’s fighting the urge to make fun of him.

“Well, soldiers are supposed to have people to write to and write to them.”

That’s what this is all about?

“Soldiers are supposed to have sweethearts write to them.”

“I don’t have one of those,” he takes a long pause, “Or parents or siblings. Or that many friends really. I know you already have your brothers to keep in touch with, but could you write to me?”

Arya feels her face flush. Her stomach is twisting with a feeling she doesn’t understand. 

“Sure, sure I will.”

She turns away back home and tries to forget how lonely he looked.

Beth can handle most of the cooking now, as long as it’s nothing fancy. That leads to Arya having to help with most of the cleaning. There’s less of it now, now that there’s two fewer people in the house, but Catelyn insists that they don’t close anything up.

“We may need it soon,” she says cryptically.

Because Catelyn is a lady with a capital L, and if there’s one thing a lady is good at, it’s saving face and keeping together with other ladies. 

And the ladies of the country are organizing. 

Children flood the countryside, from London mostly but also Cambridge and Bristol and a few even from Leeds and Manchester. Everyone’s terrified of air strikes, but no one seems sure of where will be hit. The children are large and small, dirty and clean. Siblings together grasp hands, and lone ones wrap their overcoats on tightly. They all have cardboard signs hung around their necks. 

They stick them wherever they can fit. Nearly everyone in the village takes at least one. The Reeds take in a rather fat young man who had worked in a bakery in London and had screamed when he first saw a frog. Jyana Reed had said that the house was already beginning to feel empty, with her husband having rejoined up with the service, despite his age. Winterfell even hosts three; a small girl not yet speaking much, whom Arya calls Weasel, and a young woman from the East End with a newborn baby. 

“I’m calling him little Sam,” the mum says, “After a man I knew.” Her name is Gilly, and she looks to Cat like she’s never had a proper meal before. 

The news is almost strangely quiet. Hitler keeps trying to do things, and occasionally a ship sinks, but for a country at war, it feels rather calm. 

And every once in a while the air raid sirens blare. 

The pamphlets sent out with the black out directions also give safety instructions during an air raid. Everyone keeps their gas masks handy. They’ve all been drills and false alarms so far, but the raids take a special toll on Bran. 

“It’s bad enough having to be carried down into the cellar every time, but what if one happens when I’m alone? I can probably drag myself down the steps- slowly- but I’ll be stuck having to hope that someone comes by and finds me. If I get down into the cellar before the bombs hit anyway.”

“At least your cellar has a proper staircase. Ours is just a ladder.” Meera tells him. She’s got a suitcase with her and has come to return something to Arya. She’s just turned eighteen, and is joining the women’s Navy. They’re so close to Portsmouth, but she’s being sent all the way to Liverpool to train.

She’s come by to say goodbye. 

“I wanted to dodge Arya. I’ll write to her, but I don’t want to give her another face leaving to stick in her mind.”

“If you’d worn your uniform, you might have scared her off. I’m not sure militarism would suit her. “

“I haven’t been issued my uniform yet. Everything is being requisitioned. All the clothing factories are making service uniforms now.”

“Aren’t you...scared?” Bran had asked her when she had first told them. 

“All the posters and things keep saying Wrens are “Never at Sea”, but I’m not sure I buy it. They’re throwing everything at the Germans. I’m not sure how long it will even be.” 

She tries to smile, but can’t quite, and tries to lighten the mood. 

“Besides, I can swim. Swim and row, so basic training might be easier on me.”

Her face goes serious again. Meera not being able to smile feels like something deeply troubling to Bran. 

“Can you take care of Jojen for me? With Dad gone too...Mum will have enough to worry about without having to worry so much about him too. Make sure he takes his medicine. Make sure he remembers what’s going on when it doesn’t work and he seizes anyway. “

“I can try, “ Bran says honestly. 

Jojen’s been bringing over his charts and books, and the two of them are trying to teach themselves morse code. 

“I wanted to get licensed to do amateur radio broadcasting before this all started,” Jojen admits, “But the government shut down all the bands. It’s too bad, it could be dead useful.”

No one remaining at Winterfell gets much from the outside world, except through letters. 

Ned writes that London has transformed. So many businesses have closed up, and houses lie empty, abandoned. He says he will return to Winterfell as soon as he can.

Sansa says that nearly half of her classmates didn’t return to school. 

_It means classes are all super small now, which is sort of nice. I finished up senior-level French last year, so I’m doing more in independent study. The teacher says she doesn’t know why, I’m already top of the class. English is much the same as it’s always been. Only one of the history teachers returned, so we’re all stuffed in one class._

__

__

Headmistress says that because of the war, they’re offering several extracurricular courses for girls who wish to support the war. I’m taking typing and first aid. I do miss my dancing lessons- the dancing master has joined up- but some of us girls still practice in the common rooms in the evenings.

Margaery got into some trouble when she decided to start a German club. She’s nearly as fluent in it as she is in French- it sounds so much lovelier coming from her than from me!- and she insists that it could prove useful for all of us if the war continues.

_All the blackout rules are terrifying though. The dormitories are such a big building, and seeing it in total darkness is like a whole different world. And the sirens. I fear I will hear them in my dreams._

She doesn’t tell them about the girl who was outside past curfew when the sirens went off. She’d returned to campus hours after, her head bloodied, having been struck in the dark by a carriage before pulling herself to the side of the road and cowering in a ditch until the all-clear blew. Headmistress had sent her home with nary a word to the others. Sansa still didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt. 

Catelyn sighs again at Sansa’s letter. Typing and first aid. Sansa should have been spending her days imagining her debut into society, of meeting someone she could marry, of being a true lady as she was born for. She’d so hoped her starry eyed dreamer of a daughter could be spared the horrors that this conflict was going to bring. She could just see Sansa going into nursing with her huge heart and no idea the sorts of things she would see. 

First Aid though. That sparks Catelyn’s mind, for her more wayward daughter. She reaches out to Mya, who was the daughter of a groom who had once worked for the Starks, but knew her daughter in an entire different role.

And a week into November, Arya does something she hasn’t done in over a year. She puts on her Girl Guides uniform, and goes into the village for a meeting. Her former patrol that had dwindled last she had been there, now was swollen to bursting with evacuees from the cities.

_I’m old enough to be a Ranger now she says when she writes to Gendry, Though my uniform isn’t right for it. It’s no matter now, no one’s getting any new ones. I used to go a lot, I loved the camping trips and cook outs. I even learned to use a knife there. But Mother always fretted about me spending all my time around the village girls, told me I was destined for a different life, and when I got older all the girls started wanting to do needlework badges and stuff about babies and so I bailed._

__

__

_This week we went around painting the sidewalk curbs white, so people can see them better in the blackouts. Next week we’re helping dig public shelters and starting our first aid training. I still think the songs are stupid though._

Most of Gendry’s letters have been him whingeing about basic training. Arya’s not sure to what end- he’s not going to get much in the way of sympathy from her, and she’s more than capable of whingeing right back. Besides, she thought, he should be used to terrible food and spartan living conditions, having basically had to care for himself since his mother’s passing when he was twelve. Perhaps he shares her opposition to being told what to do, she thinks, and wants someone to agree with him.

Robb and Jon also send letters, more once they both finish basic. They’ve both passed qualifications and are assigned to become fighters. This horrifies Catelyn and excites Arya and Bran. 

Robb’s letters are more of what’s expected. Complaints about the food, the lack of privacy. Arya snickers at that, it can’t be as bad as boarding school can it? How much he misses everyone. That hurts. 

Jon repeats all of Robb’s sentiments, but also speaks of his pilot’s training. 

_Story is they picked Robb and I because we went to a “good school”. Apparently having ridden horses or handled yachts is a good base for learning to fly. I didn’t really do much of any of that, but the instructor’s say I’m a natural. The steering, handling the g-forces, it comes easily to me. I feel like this is what I should be doing._

He doesn’t give too many elaborate loving descriptions of the planes they practice on, for fear of making Bran too jealous. He does send drawings though, as amateurish as they are. Bran tries to improve upon the crude sketches on his own, planning to send them back to Jon as a Christmas gift. 

Because 1939 is coming to an end, and Christmas is coming with it, no matter what else is happening. 

Ned returns home in December, once the snow is falling heavily and the countryside is as cold as it gets. He brings with him several boxes, that he claims they can’t open until the 25th. He returns to hugs and great cheer, at last, a Stark returning to Winterfell in time for Christmas.

Especially since he’s the only one. 

“Last letter,” Arya says, morose when the envelope in Sansa’s pretty script arrived accompanying a large parcel.

It had been awful enough learning that Robb and Jon weren’t going to be coming home. No one was getting leave this year, no matter how little seemed to be going on. 

_No one can get train tickets to go home, the government has cracked down on it so much. Some of the other girls come from as far away as Scotland. A few of us as staying with Margaery’s family for Christmas, they have so much room and are just over the hill. I miss everyone, I hope you all like your presents._

She resists the urge to gush about Highgarden, the most grand estate she had ever seen. The Tyrell’s were hosting several girls from the Land Army, and there were so many people and so much cheer that Sansa felt like an ingrate how much fun she was having. 

Arya was still a bit sour when Christmas Eve comes. They couldn’t put lights on the Christmas tree even, because of the blackout rules. None of the shops in the village had window displays either. The church still held their Christmas Eve service, but they didn’t ring the bells. 

The person who gives Arya back her spirit ends up being of all people, Gilly. 

“I’ve never really had a proper Christmas!” She admits when they’re stuffing the Christmas goose to put it in the oven overnight. Jyana has come by for Christmas Eve with Jojen and the boy they've taken in, who it turns out has lots of Opinions about food. They will have a proper feast, if not as grand as in previous years, where they were usually entertaining guests, but there’s a goose and potatoes and lots of baked biscuits, even if they came after very long lines. 

“What do you mean by that?” Arya asks her. 

“We were terribly poor, never had a tree or nothing. The rain and snow would leak in through the roof bad in winter. And most Christmases Papa would just extra drunk and we girls would hurt for it.”

Catelyn comes over and cuts her off. 

“You shouldn’t ask things like that Arya,” she whispers to her, “That girl’s had a hard enough life, without you drudging up memories of it.”

Arya can do that. She’s old enough to realize that she shouldn’t ask where little Sam’s father is. 

And when Christmas morning comes Gilly claps her hands at the Christmas tree and the red and gold decorations on the tables and staircases, and even little Sam looks delighted no matter his size. Even Weasel, usually so stoic, looked dazzled. 

There are gifts. Sansa knitted and sewed things in class to send to everyone. The pullover she’s made Arya is terribly soft and goes along perfectly with the enormous wooly hat Gilly had made her. Ned and Catelyn give all the younger Stark’s books, even Weasel and Gilly. Bran and Arya had collaborated with the Reed’s boy who had come to be nicknamed “Hot Pie” to make everyone fudge. And the boxes Ned had brought from London turned out to be new clothes, sizes that would fit everyone for some time. 

“I remember the last war,” Catelyn comments later in the day when the others are full of Christmas dinner, enjoying their gifts and listening to the BBC’s Christmas programme. 

“Buttons, ribbon, wool. Everything was in short supply,” Ned says completing her words. “And if Bran and Arya sprout up like Robb and Sansa did at their age, we would be in trouble.”

Cat stares out the snowy window. 

“Tell me this won’t last as long as the last one Ned, “ she begs quietly, “Tell me this might not be our last Christmas together.”

Ned takes her in his arms and stares out the window into the world outside Winterfell and tries not to fear what the next year might bring.


	3. 1940, part 1

1940 begins. At the end of January, Arya turns fifteen, and along with her birthday comes the start of food rationing. 

Hot Pie is outraged. He says nothing of quality can be baked with the butter and sugar they are allotted. Bran misses bacon terribly. But the day before her birthday, the greengrocer in the village has apples in stock, and Hot Pie whips up a fairly decent apple pudding. 

Even the things that aren’t on ration seem to be getting harder to get. Shopping involves waiting endlessly in long lines.

And with the end of winter, comes the first casualty of the war. 

It doesn’t really seem right to call it a casualty, but that’s how it feels. After Old Nan doesn’t show up for a few days, Arya rides down to the church to check on her. 

Her sister says it looked like an apoplexy, in the night. 

It’s a blow to the whole family. 

“Nan was our nurse when I was a child too,” Ned says when they leave the church after her memorial. “I knew she was old, but I didn’t ever really think this would happen.”

“What are we going to do about Rickon?” Cat wants to know. 

Rickon, the youngest, who less than ten minutes after the memorial has already taken off to play football with the evacuee boys. 

Cat gazes after him. 

“Gilly seems to be good enough with him, but I don’t know if there’s really anything we could do about Rickon that would change him,” is Ned’s take on it. 

“I know I used to worry about Arya,” Cat muses, “too much probably. But I never worried she might slip away, just one day sneak away through a spot in this world and slip free.”

Slip free, Ned thinks, does sound like something that might explain Rickon.

As soon as the ground starts to thaw in early spring, Catelyn throws shovels at all of them with packets of seed and pamphlets on digging for Victory. 

Arya groans. Some of the Guides in her patrol had helped type and print those. 

Bran rolls himself outside to watch them dig up the roses and rhododendrons to replace them with potatoes, and carrots and turnips. 

He reads the back of the packet of carrot seeds and tosses it to Gilly to take a look. 

“It doesn’t say that there are other colored carrots too. We mostly eat the orange kind in tribute to William of Orange.” he comments. 

Gilly laughs at him, 

“I don’t know how you remember all of this.”

“Well it’s more interesting than remembering who William of Orange was,” Bran insists. Bran has been spending more time with Gilly in the new year. The realization that the girl was borderline illiterate had been a shock to him he had desperately wanted to correct. 

“I don’t understand, don’t they make you go to school in London?” he asks her. 

“No one really pays attention,” Gilly says, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, “And it’s not like I can’t read anything, I can write my name and do all my letters. But I don’t understand how you can look at all those words on that pamphlet and make sense of it.”

And so Bran embarks on a quest. 

Ned asks Arya every week what her and the guides are doing. She’s already finished her first aid badge, and her electrician badge, and next week their starting on the signalling badge. She’s been looking forward to that one, she’s still terribly jealous of Meera’s proximity to boats. She doesn’t tell her father that their even talking about doing riflery badges too. 

In the springtime, Bran helps her get her telegraphist badge. The requirements are that she build her own receiver and be able to transmit in Morse code at at least 30 letters per minute. Jojen and Bran both manage it easily, and eventually, she can too. 

They all listen to the wireless more.

The news of the invasion of Norway is hard to listen to, it’s far too close to Scotland. 

“You don’t think Robb and Jon…” Cat starts off. 

“I don’t think so, “ Bran comments, “Their more recent letters say their squadrons have only been over France. 

Jon in particular, has waxed poetic about how France looks from above. His letters he’s sent to Sansa in Kent are mostly recounts of what he has seen of the country. 

Sansa tries not to be jealous when she reads them at school. 

“You’ve never been to France?” Margaery asks her one day when she’s recounting what he’s written. They’re stretched out side by side on her bedspread in the dormitory, most of the other girls outside in the warm spring day. 

Sansa shakes her head. 

“I’ve been to Scotland a few times, but never overseas. Have you?”

Margaery nods. 

“My grandmother is French, she lived in Paris as a girl, she spoke French to all of us as children. We’ve gone back multiple times. We can’t anymore, obviously, especially with the way things are going, but..”

Sansa doesn’t really notice her pause. She’s done all the things they say she should to support the war effort, but sometimes it feels like she doesn’t grasp it. 

“I’ve been to where my mother’s from, but Suffolk isn’t really anything like a different country.” And no one in the family was terribly close to Uncle Brynden, who was a career soldier, or Uncle Edmure, who didn’t really seem to know what he was. 

“Maybe I’ll take you someday,” Margaery tells her quietly. When Sansa turns seventeen in early May, she gives her a pair of gramophone records of a singer her grandmother had spoken to her about being one of France’s greatest. 

When France falls, school has already let out for summer, so Sansa doesn’t have to see her cry. 

Olenna scolds her for it. 

“Don’t get upset, get angry. You should be angry that your homeland has been taken over by those lousy krauts.”

She doesn’t correct her that she was born in Britain and that it is actually what she would call her homeland, but correcting her grandmother has never gotten Margaery anywhere in life so she just wipes her cheeks clean and goes on. 

After France falls, Gendry’s letters to Arya transform from belligerent to sorrowful. 

_There were so many fleeing, the Navy didn’t have enough ships to take them all. We had people piled up on top of each other across the channel. There were fishing boats and cruise ships trying to rescue people who were fleeing, and there still weren’t enough. I saw people trying to swim...I don’t even want to try and imagine if any of them made it. And then we had to go back, again, for eight days straight._

_I haven’t felt like this since hearing about Norway. Stories of pilots whose planes couldn’t even take off because everything was frozen. It was only weeks ago,_

_Our ship was moored early because of a special assignment. We were escorting a small group of civilians, patients from Institut Pasteur. One of them was the ten year old daughter of some high up politician. The girl was there for experimental treatment of leprosy. Leprosy! As if her life wasn’t going poorly enough, there has to be a war on._

_Even though we brought the patients on board first, we packed the ship to the gills before leaving. Soldiers packed in like sardines, sweaty, bloodied, scared out of their minds. Don’t tell Robb and Jon, but I heard a lot of men cursing the RAF because the sky was too thick with gunfire to see if the planes were doing anything to help._

_The leper girl- her name’s Shireen something- somehow seemed perfectly happy through it all. She has big patches all over the side of her face, and some of the others onboard seem wary of being near her, but she didn’t pay them any mind. She was singing songs and reading from a book she had carried with her the whole trip. Oh to have her heart in the face of horror._

France falls and summer comes, and thank God Sansa’s returned home. Because over the summer comes the bombardment. 

Robb not only doesn’t get leave for his birthday, he doesn’t even get to write letters home during it. The RAF is trying to fight off the attacks on the Channel Islands shipping lanes. They aren’t succeeding. 

Meera had been stationed in Devonport, near Plymouth, which starting in July, begins to take a beating. She writes as frequently as she can. Her letters from earlier in the year had been mild by comparison. She had spoken of her training, and the other women on her ship. She’s always had a mild temperament, and took orders easily enough. The other women it seems, mostly think of her as distant and aloof, or the more charitable ones, like she has her head in the clouds. The ones who are intrigued by her title are put off when they realize she really isn’t that grand. 

_I guess I should accept that I never have really felt like I fit in. I don’t pick fights though, so most of others just ignore me. I’ve never thought myself unfriendly, but apparently I keep to myself more than most. It was strange, before the war I didn’t really know who I was. I’m hardly some fine lady, born for a life of theater and socials, and many of the upper class would think me no better than a street urchin. But the working class girls spot my accent immediately, and I have far more schooling than them. Even here. But at least here we’re all Wrens, we know who we are here. My bunk mate, Dacey is nice though. She’s from up north, her father owns a mine. Sometimes when we have time off we ride bikes around the town. I miss swimming, I miss fishing too. It’s hard to remember families use to holiday in Devon. The beaches are blocked off now, with thick rings of barbed wire. We helped place mines there too. I hope we can clear them easily enough when their not needed._

Plymouth begins being struck from the air first. She can’t write as often then. When she does, Jojen begins bringing by pieces of paper marked with just Bran’s name. He doesn’t understand why, and Jojen doesn’t seem to either, fixing Bran with looks that are somehow both curious and suspicious. 

Reading them it’s understandable. 

_I marked these for you Bran because I didn’t really think I should tell some of this to Arya. The letters she writes me are hot blooded as it is. You can share with her if you want._

_Seeing the after effects of the bombs is harrowing, both the buildings and the people. I was upset that I didn’t get stationed in Portsmouth at first, but I don’t think I could watch this happen to something so close to home._

_I was partially right. We may not be at sea, but as soon as the bombs started to fall, those first ones in Cardiff, they asked for volunteers to learn to crew the anti-aircraft guns._

_The guns we have fire so fast you can barely keep track. It takes four of us to fire the damn thing, and if you’re not careful it can knock you on your arse. If we bring any of the Luftwaffe down, I like to imagine it was me._

After Plymouth, Portsmouth is next. 

Winterfell’s not that close to Portsmouth, the Stark children had always though, not really anyway. Arya could have made the journey by bike, but her legs would ache and her chest burn with exertion by the time she reached the outskirts. 

But now it is somehow both far away and right outside the window. 

Every day it seems, the roads are packed with the injured, clutching bundles of possessions, fleeing their destroyed homes. If anyone’s outside when the sirens blare, they can see the sky filling with smoke and fire. Any time of day RAF pilots might pass over head. One morning, when the all-clear blows, Arya sees the red-orange glow of the city on fire over the far horizon, and thinks that it looks frighteningly beautiful. 

It’s too far away for most of the volunteers from the village, yet Arya’s guide patrol still makes the journey by bus a few times. They try to clear some of the injured from the first aid stations. She’s growing surprisingly numb to the sight of blood and burns, the sounds of children and grown men screaming. The smell is another story. 

Twice, the guides have to take shelter themselves in town, when the sirens announce daytime strikes. 

Bran spends his own birthday in the cellar. It’s not like they’re going to be able to have a cake anyway. 

They’ve dragged bedding and pillows down, they’re all in the cellar so much. Having been dragged down the steps by both of his parents, and one memorable occasion by Arya and Gilly, Bran’s beginning to think he ought to just find a way to set up a cot or something and sleep down here. Maybe do his schoolwork. Never leave the cellar. 

That particular day, Ned is in the village, sheltering at the station where he had gone to refill the petrol with their remaining ration. Cat, Sansa and Gilly are knitting socks, and Arya is pacing. 

There’s a loud whistle and a crash that feels far too close. There’s no explosion. 

“That was an incendiary,” Arya mutters while pacing, “It won’t explode, it will burst into flames and shoot out bits of metal-” 

Bran cuts her off. Sansa is crying and their mother’s face is tight. 

“How do you tell the difference?”

“It’s the sound.”

Arya stops herself from telling them about the incendiary charges went off the last time her patrol had been in town. It had set the house next to their shelter on fire, and provided light for the next charge to be aimed at. It had flattened the block. Had they been in one of those pop up shelters instead of a proper underground one, they would have all died. 

In the middle of August, Arya is shocked to discover Sansa’s planning to return to school the beginning of September. 

“How can you leave? Bombs are falling from the sky!”

“Bombs are falling all over the country, Arya,” This isn’t entirely true, but it remains that the entire southern coast is taking a beating and dogfights are happening over Kent every day as well. 

“But if you stay, you’ll be able to be with all of us.” Arya’s eyes are welling up. Her and Sansa were never close, but this whole war has made her heart feel tender in ways it never had. After losing Robb and Jon, and Gendry and Meera, Arya had no desire to let anyone else in her family get away from her. 

“It’s my last year of school, I have to finish. If I don’t, it’s like we’re letting the Nazis beat us. It’s not like I can just stay home forever.”

Arya clenches her fists. Is that what this is about? Sansa’s always talked about leaving Winterfell, going to London or Paris or New York, and meeting glamorous people and having some grand romance. Did she still want that, even when she might lose everyone?

“You just want to get away from all of us. We’re not good enough for you anymore are we? You just want to fuck off and leave us all behind.”

Her language is harsh, and her sentiment more so. Sansa has tears running down face, and turns to run away. 

Her mother scolds her that night, and when everyone has gone to bed (thankfully, free of air raids for the night), Arya sits up in the parlor by herself. 

Ned joins her, offering her a cup of newly rationed tea. 

“You were cruel to your sister.”

Arya hangs her head. 

“You should apologize before she leaves, or you might regret it.”

“She wouldn’t even care.”

Ned sighs, and wraps an arm around his daughter. 

“Sansa loves you, she loves all of us. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have cared what you said to her.”

“Then why does she want to leave again?”

Ned looks at her carefully, 

“Arya, what do you want from life?”

Arya tilts her head, 

“I don’t really know. I’d like to learn to drive a car. I’d like to swim in the ocean. I’d like to try riding my bike further north, maybe over several days.”

She pauses, for a long time. 

“I’d like to get a job, see what it’s like to support myself. I want to go swimming with Meera and Jojen. I want to take rides with Robb, I want Jon to explain everything to me that’s happening in the newspaper. I want to fight with Gendry over Weird Tales, then bring it home and read it with Bran anyway.”

“You want to stay at Winterfell.”

You want things to stay the way they used to be, is what he means, but doesn’t say.

It all sounds strange on Arya’s tongue. She’s always wanted adventure, read stories of jungle expeditions and space flights. Listening to her father’s stories from his days in the Navy as a young child, she’d once asked if she would ever do something so great. Ned had laughed, and the next day brought home a copy of 20,000 League Under the Sea. 

The Nazis had stolen that from Arya. Now she longed for the war to end, and for her family to return home. She longed to help bring them home. 

Arya nods, eventually. That really is the rub. 

“Your mother’s always wanted the same for both you and Sansa what she had. She wants you two to marry well. To marry men of means who love you. For you to be good ladies, who live lives of ease. That would always involve you leaving, and I think that’s one of the reasons you’ve always fought so hard against it.”

Ned suddenly looks very sad. 

“I don’t think any of that will happen any time soon. Sansa’s always been more open to the life your mother’s wanted. She’s seen life outside and wants more of it. There’s a lot of wonderful things in the world, outside of Wintefell. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, or her home.”

Ned leans over the squeeze Arya’s shoulders. 

“I’m going on the train with Sansa tomorrow, to spend a few days in London.”

“What? Why.”

“Got a call from the foreman. Emergency he needs me to deal with.”

“Why doesn’t he ever call Robert with these?”

Ned laughs. Robert Baratheon, longtime friend, was part owner in the factory. Part owner, but Ned would be pressed to find if Robert gave it any thought whatsoever.

“Because Robert is all the way out in Cheshire, God’s knows how he spends his days.”

Arya still looks terribly downcast. 

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I understand what you were trying to tell Sansa, but you should still apologize for making her cry. I want to be together with all of you just as much as you do.”

And with that, Ned sends his daughter off to bed. 

Sansa and Ned leave the next day on the same train, an hour later disembarking and parting ways. 

Arya had watched the two of them leave, and try as she might, couldn’t take her father’s advice. Sansa hadn’t even looked her in the eye over breakfast. 

Bombs fall again that night, and in the cellar, Arya feels empty. 

The next day, Bran is listening to the wireless and tells her, 

“They’re bombing London now.”

Arya feels her insides seize. 

A few days he’d said. For once, Catelyn looks as upset as Arya. Ned had telephoned the first day, and the second, but they hadn’t heard from him since. 

“They’re aiming for the docks, and the East End,” Bran tells everyone on the third day. “

Gilly chokes a bit, but doesn’t cry. 

“My sisters- I hope some of them at least fled.”

“What about your father?” Bran asks. 

“He can burn for all I care”. 

On the end of the fourth day, Catelyn finally dials the telephone of the factory office.

They haven’t seen Ned since the day before. She tries again the next day. And the next. 

Finally, someone gives them the answer. 

Arya has never seen her mother collapse before. She’s making noises, like she’s gasping for air. She drops the phone. 

Arya picks it up, and demands to know what her mother has just been told. 

Parts of her feared, perhaps parts already knew. 

Eddark Stark, believed deceased on the 9th of September in structural collapse of the Hotel Guilford….


	4. 1940, part 2, 1941, part 1

Only Robb manages to get home for the memorial. 

He manages to grab a leave pass when what has happened becomes known. Jon isn’t as lucky, “not immediate family”, apparently.

It’s small, it has to be. There are too many who have died to take up all the time with theirs. It’s not like they even have his remains to bury, just a stone with a name. There are lots of well-wishers who come to Winterfell though. Even though the Stark family hadn’t owned land outside Winterfell in generations, Ned had a reputation for generosity, for integrity, and most of all, for his friendship. 

Bran and Catelyn had sobbed openly. Robb had raged, angry at the Germans, angry at the RAF for not letting Jon be here, angry at the bomb. Arya had simply sat silently, seemingly numb.

Robb hadn’t even been able to stay the night. The RAF needed him back, trying to keep up with the Luftwaffe bombers.

Sansa had jumped on a train as soon as she could after the headmistress had come up to the door holding the telegram with a grim face.

It had been no good. The bombs had badly damaged the tracks outside London. She had slept in the train station for three days until it could be cleared up. When she finally got home, the memorial had already finished, so she simply pays her respects, stops to hug her mother, and again departs. 

On the train ride back, she reads about the City of Benares. It had been on the way to Canada, carrying nearly a hundred children being evacuated, when it had been torpedoed. Such is the world now. 

And the bombings continue. 

The coast has begun to receive a bit of a break now that the Germans seemed to focused so wholly on London. 

Letters pile up. Jon’s are extensive, he sends notes to everyone, all written separately. 

He tells Arya that the RAF are doing everything they can to avenge Ned’s death.

He tries to distract Bran with anecdotes about his plane.

He tells Sansa of the English Channel from above, how it looks so blue from a distance, as smooth as glass, except when it’s not, when the tides and waves kick up so much it looks as though it could swallow a ship whole. 

He apologizes to Catelyn over and over. She’s never been cruel to him, but she’s never been entirely able to treat him entirely as her own. The little things, that he’s sure she doesn’t realize. But he tells her again and again, how good Ned was to him, how much he appreciates the two of them having taken him in, for all they’ve done for him.

Meera’s letters are incredibly heartfelt, but also sound like they were written under pressure. While the coast has gotten a bit of a break, the bombs haven’t stopped falling and her days drag on and on. 

And of course, right before the bombings started, was when the government added tea to the list of foods being rationed. As if bacon, butter, meat, milk, cheese, sugar, cooking oil and sweets weren’t enough. 

Catelyn didn’t feel like her nerves would ever settle, but when the sky awoke with a roar that drowned out the empty echo in her heart, she would have appreciated a cup of tea. 

One of the cooks at Sansa’s school grows mint leaves in the window, dries and grinds them up before steeping them in water. It somewhat, somehow, resembles tea. It’s something. 

Something to keep Sansa from feeling even more alone. 

Margaery finished school last spring. Sansa had thought she would still be at Highgarden, just over the hill, but in July, Margaery had received a job offer from a friend of her grandmother’s, working with someone in the war office in London, doing translations. 

_London is in a state, I’ve never seen anything like it. Every day I walk to work past some other building that won’t be there the next day. Even the theaters, the department stores, the museums. Things that were once such a source of beauty are now dour and gray. I know you love the countryside as I do, but cities are something special, and I so hate to see this happen to London._

_My work place is in a small office on Baker Street. I can’t imagine what Sherlock Holmes would think of it now.  
_  
Christmas comes, though it hardly feels like it. Sansa can’t make it home again, and deep down, she’s not sure she would be able to make herself anyway. She walks to the Tyrells’ on Christmas Eve, to say hello to Olenna. And to try and sate the loneliness that has come over her. 

She has good timing. Margaery’s managed to visit for Christmas, but only for two days, before she must return to London. Her dark curls are limp and her smile looks pulled tight, but she hugs Sansa all the same. 

“I was so scared that when I came home something else would have been destroyed, “ she admits. 

“We see planes fly over here all the time,” Sansa tells her, “And the fields are full of debris from the fights. There have been a few fires, but-”

She doesn’t have to say it. There’s not much out here for the Germans to want to destroy. 

“When you finish your leaving certificate, you should write me in London,” Margaery tells her as she walks her to the train station on Boxing Day. “One of the men in my office’s ears perked up when I mentioned your name.”

“My name?” Sansa asks confused. She knows that the Starks are an old family, but she’s certainly never encountered anyone who wished to speak to her solely because of who she was. 

“Next time you right your mother, ask her if she remembers a Petyr Baelish.”

Christmas comes to Winterfell too.

The Reed’s pond doesn’t freeze over in December, so for Christmas, Jojen rows out and manages to fish up three small cod. Hot Pie hoards his egg rations three weeks in a row, and together with some potatoes from the Stark’s garden, manages to live up to his name and produce a somewhat respectable stargazy pie. He insists it doesn’t taste right without bacon. Bran and Gilly eye it with suspicion, not entirely sure about eating something that looks back at them.

The bombs still fall, even over Christmas. In November, Coventry had nearly been wiped off the map, and letters from Robb and Jon say Manchester and Liverpool have been taking the brunt leading up to the holiday. 

They set up the tree, though there are no bells on Christmas morning, and only handmade gifts. On Christmas morning, Arya and Bran sit beside the tree, read aloud to Rickon and Weasel, and miss their father terribly. 

Arya doesn’t even notice when she turns sixteen. It rains heavily that day, she spends it inside, knitting what must be the world’s ugliest socks. 

Bran has insisted that Gilly and Catelyn teach him to knit as well, so that he can be of some practical use when they’re all stuck in the cellar. His socks are nearly as ugly as Arya’s.

Robb and Jon assure both of them in their letters that the socks are appreciated. Even Arya’s, Jon jests, could be handy as impromptu bandages. Meera just asks why the women’s services never seem to get any of those piles of socks knitted by housewives.

“I don’t understand how you haven’t gone mad,” Arya comments one day. Bran has just celebrated making his first sock with no weird bumps. 

“Knitting isn’t that awful,” Bran says, poking her with a needle. “Mother taught you when you were seven.”

Arya looks down at her lap at her own needles. 

“And somehow, you’re still better at it than me. And it’s not the knitting. I’m going mad enough not being out there, beside Jon and Robb. Fighting the enemy, avenging Father, helping all of this be over.” 

“I didn’t think you wanted to leave home.”

Arya squeezes her eyes shut, willing the tears to remain inside. She still hasn’t honestly apologized to Sansa for what she said. Their letters are cool and impersonal. 

“I can’t sit still. If I try to be still, it makes my mind run wild. Winterfell won’t be truly home again until everyone is back and okay. Until then…”

She trails off. 

“I would join the services if I could.”

“You’re only sixteen.”

Arya crosses her arms and presses the tips of her fingernails into her arms, just hard enough to leave a mark. 

“I could join up now with parents permission.”

“Mother would never let you.”

Arya laughs roughly, fingers gently soothing the half-moon shapes she’s scratched into her skin. 

“I wish she would. I’d give anything for her to. But why should she? She’s just lost her husband, her eldest son is out risking his life, why would she let her rash, angry, uncontrollable youngest daughter run off and risk hers too?”

The two of them are quiet for a long time. 

“You asked me how I could stand it,” Bran starts quietly, “I didn’t have a choice. The day I fell, all my dreams suddenly fell too. I couldn’t be a pilot, I couldn’t even climb a tree anymore. You think I wanted to end up sitting in a cellar knitting socks? There was nothing I could do about it. I had to find other dreams. The books you brought me always helped.”

Arya smiles. 

“The adventures we would never have.”

“Remember years ago before Father sold Dancer and built the garage where the stables were? When we used to play knights and ladies?”

“And Father told us knights didn’t ride through the wilds of America and ladies didn’t secretly carry rifles under their skirts?”

“I think it would be more fun if they did,” Bran admits. “I think maybe that’s my dream now, to come up with all the impossible things, and write them down for others. The way Jon writes to us about flying, I almost feel like I’ve been up there myself.”

“You could write books, you could write all the books from where you are. You draw a bunch, you could do comics. Or host radio shows.”

They both laugh a bit. 

“You should come with me to the first aid station with the guides next week, it’s just the one in the village. It would give you something to do outside the house. And it really does do good for people.”

The station in the village mostly deals with children. While no bombs have detonated over the village, there have been mines and munitions, dropped as if rubbish, doting the entire countryside. Every once and awhile, a child will play too close, or decide to poke one with a stick. 

Bran’s first patient is a little boy who decided to do just that, and suffered burns over his entire right arm. Truly, he was lucky it was just that, Arya thought. Last week, the ambulance crew had had to go out and scrape up the remains of a boy who hadn’t been so lucky. 

Bran wonders if Arya said something to their mother about him feeling trapped, because sometime after, Catelyn calls him into the study and insists on showing him all the important papers and ledgers and accounts. 

“With Robb gone, it may fall to you to act as the heir.”

Heir? That’s not a word Bran has ever given any thought to whatsoever. Cripple aside, he’s only fourteen years old. But Catelyn insists. 

She’s spent so much time on the phone since September, keeping up with Robert and making sure he doesn’t, through malice or negligence, end up cutting them out of what the factory produces. It’s taken so much out of her, but she must endure. All of them must. 

When spring comes, and her final exams looming, Sansa stops to consider her future. 

Every bone in her body longs to return home, but she cannot. Seems strange that in the beginning of the school year she so desperately wanted to leave. She thinks of Winterfell, without Jon or Robb, or Father, and it just doesn’t seem like her home anymore.

She clutches the letter she’d just received from her mother in one hand.   
_  
Petyr Baelish was a childhood friend, back home in Suffolk. I’m afraid I haven’t spoken to him in years, though if he thinks his office may have work for you, I should remedy that.  
_  
This time two years ago, Sansa had hoped to appeal to her parents. She hoped she would be able to have a Season, to be introduced to society. To go to great parties and meet important people. To be allowed the opportunity to meet a man and fall in love and marry and have a wonderful life. 

That was what was supposed to be happening to her. Now she was hoping to be allowed to take a job, in an office far from home, doing god’s knows what. But here she is. 

The bombing raids finally start to slow in May, following Sansa’s eighteenth birthday.

Meera’s letters start coming more often again.   
_  
It was a break enough when the day raids slowed first. I’m not sure how long it will be until I can sleep normal hours again. I’m not on guns anymore though. I can’t talk about what I’m doing now though, it’s seriously top secret. Lets just say, make sure to eat your carrots.  
_  
Well at least that parts not hard. Every single week it seems like something more is rationed, or something that’s not rationed is nowhere to be found. The garden is flowering again, and invaluable. 

One afternoon, around a pot of carrot soup, the conversation has somehow turned to the first thing everyone wants to eat the most when this is all over.

“I’m going to make myself a chicken pie. All white meat, cooked until it just falls apart in your mouth. Veggies super tender, and only the thickest gravy.” Hot Pie is the first to respond. 

“I miss bacon and eggs the most,” Bran admits. 

“Even toast with jam would be amazing now,” Jojen interjects. 

“A slice of cake, one of those soft lemon ones Cook used to always make for Sansa’s birthday. And a glass of milk with it,” is Arya’s answer. 

“We never had much in London,” Gilly admits, “But sometimes on Sunday, I could whip up a good beef stew.”

“And tea with everything,” Hot Pie adds. They can all agree to that. 

Sansa returns home for only a week before she’s set to head back for London. She doesn’t look like Bran and Arya remember her really. Her hair is still cut short, tucked neatly under her hat. She has shed both her school uniform and the pastel frocks she’d favored as a child. The day she leaves she’s dressed in a neat dark blue suit underneath her dark green wool overcoat. She’s kept everything in perfect shape. Even clothing is being rationed now. 

The last night before she leaves, she finds Arya at one end of the dinner table reading a letter. Bran is at the other end, helping Gilly write a letter, they’re both far enough away to not easily hear what the two of them are saying. 

“From Gendry?” Sansa asks softly. 

Arya nods in return. 

“What’s he got to say?”

Arya eyes her, before turning her attention back to the paper and reading.  
 __  
Something’s big happened. One day we were just doing the usual, looking for and shooting U-boats, when suddenly we capture one and everyone goes nuts. I don’t know what’s up, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anyway. Sometimes I think the military just enjoys keeping people in the dark for the fun of it, but I think this one might be serious.

_We all had 24 hours shore leave the day we got back to port. It’s been so long on that ship that my sea legs feel like my real legs and I stumbled when they hit the ground. The other men had a go at me for it of course, they always do. Some of them are alright most of the time, but I’m not sure I would call any of them friends. I’m too stubborn I guess, you always told me that. And when we have leave, they always take off in search of local girls. I ended up finding a cinema in town that was showing a Chaplin film, so at least the day wasn’t a total wash._

_I wonder what being in a submarine is like. We’ve torpedoed so many of them I just have to think about it. I don’t think I could reread 20,000 Leagues after all of this.  
_  
When Arya finishes, she notices Sansa looking at her oddly. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The two sit in silence for a while. They try not to eavesdrop on Bran and Gilly, who is apparently writing to a Sam. She has only mentioned him offhand before, but he must important to her if she named Little Sam for him. 

“Do you know what you’ll be doing in London?” Arya finally asks. 

“Margaery says its mostly typing and checking other people’s translations, but men come by and ask everyone weird questions a lot.”

Arya nods solemnly. 

“You know, “ Sansa starts before her voice breaks and she has to try again. “You know Winterfell is where I came from. I would never abandon it.”

Arya looks at her, not in a way she’d expect, but says.

“That’s good to know.”

The next morning, Sansa leaves, and neither sister is quite sure what to make of the other anymore.

Later in the summer, everyone at Winterfell is woken by a telegram. 

Telegrams, in a time of war, are a thing to be feared. 

Not Robb, Arya thinks. Not Jon either. 

And it’s not. 

Arya joins her mother on the bus to the hospital over the county line in Dorset. 

“Why were we even informed? Shouldn’t the telegram have gone to his father?”

“Balon Greyjoy died last year.” Catelyn replies, her lips tight, “I never really knew what Theon thought of us, especially since he left Winterfell as soon as he could...but I guess he thought enough of us.”

“Does he have any other family left?”

“His sister Asha. Robb called her as soon as he heard. She’s already there, she got word before the official notification was sent. Injuries don’t get the same priority as deaths.”

Arya has grown used to the gray curtains of the first aid stations she has frequented, and the sounds and smells that go along with them; blood and disinfectant. The hospital is more of the same, with the addition of solid walls and the sounds of squeaky linen cart wheels and the injured presence of someone she knows. 

Arya has vague memories of Asha Greyjoy, who had visited her brother a few times over the years. Still thin and narrow-faced, sitting beside her brother’s bed, she looks much the same as Arya remembers, though with a few fewer pimples. 

And Theon…

Theon had been in North Africa. It hadn’t been much, just a single mine…

They’d had to amputate both his feet. The burns were more extensive, covering most of his lower body. His hand too are burned, though not as bad. The nurse says it’s likely from him attempting to grab something that had burned. The flesh was wrapped in bandages, but with the edges, pink, leathered, just peeking out. He doesn’t speak, Asha tells them he’s still pretty doped up with morphine.

It’s bad enough that they’re transferring him to a nursing home that day, one that specializes in burn care. He’ll be stuck there, with only the nurses and the other men with the same sort of injuries. Arya stays to help, but Catelyn says that she has business to attend to before she leaves the building to catch up with them. 

“I’m going to go talk to the matron. I need contact information for the WVS chapter from this hospital. The one from Hampshire should be merging now that the coast isn’t being roughed up so much.”

“Has...has he woken up at all?” Arya asks, when she helps Asha and the nurse transfer Theon into the wheelchair and they begin to push it outside to where the facility transfer shuttle is. 

She’s never been close to Theon. Despite his presence at Winterfell, he was really only Robb’s friend. Even Jon often found his brash, vulgar nature off-putting. But seeing him like this...he’s a shell of himself. He barely seems at all the boy Arya knew before.

“Only a little,” Asha tells her, “And he didn’t say much, it was mostly yelling and cursing.”

“There usually is.”

“Thinking of going into nursing?”

Arya laughs. “The Girl Guides do lots of first aid. I don’t think I’d have the patience to do it professionally.”

And she’s not sure the smell and sound would ever let her sleep again, if she was around it day-in, day-out, she thinks to herself.

“You should think about what you want to do, they’ve been talking about conscripting women soon too.”

Conscripting. Arya’s brain stutters wildly. 

“I-I would have actually joined up by now, the WAAF most likely, but I’m not even seventeen, Mother would never give me permission.”

The stop where the van shuttle leaves is nearly a half mile down the hill. There’s another nurse who helps them get Theon into the back, and strap him in while still in the chair. Arya knows the motions, having helped Bran get into Father’s car on occasion, but having to avoid even brushing Theon’s other injuries is difficult. 

“The military? Really? Can’t say you ever struck me as the kind for chanting and marching and ranks. Unless you’ve really come a long way from the tree-climber with selective hearing.”

Arya feels her pride, such as it was, prickle upwards in her chest. 

“Well what will you be doing to do your part?”

Asha pulls a card from her pocketbook and hands it to her. 

“My father used to have men working ferrying coal up north. I apparently couldn’t be trusted to inherit the mine, that went to my uncle, but I got his barges. I’ve been striking a deal to move everything, coal, steel, all kinds of supplies, up and down the canals. Everywhere, Birmingham, London, Manchester. The roads are blocked all the time, the railways eat coal. Someone has to keep the power on. I just need crew.” 

She reaches out and squeezes Arya’s upper arm.

“I need girls of a strong constitution, none of these soft city girls who have never done a day’s work. Crewing a barge takes strength. You could join us. Help us keep the country running and the lights on.”

Arya’s head is swimming, swimming with possibilities. She was strong, she could row, it would be-

She freezes, hearing a tinny sound, like a bee buzzing in her ear, but so far off...

Then there’s an explosion, and the ground shakes beneath her. 

She stumbles to the ground. She must have hit something, because blood drips down one of her cheeks. The shock wave have been enough that the windows of the shuttle van have blown out. She hears the nurse checking Theon over inside, and feels Asha grab her by the arm and pull her to her feet. 

She knows the hospital is on fire before she even turns around. Her nose now pricks at even the slightest smell of smoke. 

When she pulls away from Asha and turns to run, is when she sees. The top of the building has caved in, a ragged hole where it used to be. She hears a voice screaming.

The tiny conscious part of her mind thinks, I knew it was a stupid idea to mark hospital roofs. Why would the Germans care if they were targeting innocents?

The rest of her mind is screaming. A dull part of her realizes the screams she hears is herself. 

_Mother_ , is the first word she consciously can make herself say. It comes out soft, like a prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tons of historical easter eggs in here, if you catch one, you win...probably as good grades in history as I always got :D

**Author's Note:**

> The story Gendry tells Arya to read is "Who Goes There?" by John W Campbell Jr. It's the story that eventually became The Thing from Another World.


End file.
